John Crown (Independent)

I have held the view since before I had the privilege of entering this House that our Constitution is badly broken and that it needs fixing. It is broken at a number of levels. As I said in my election literature, I believe the Seanad, as currently constituted, is an affront to democracy. I also believe there are significant problems in respect of the other House, the Dáil, which is composed largely of people who deal exclusively with local concerns, laying a heavy emphasis on parochialism, as opposed to people who can give serious consideration to questions of national interest. I mean no disrespect to the Minister or to any Ministers who have visited this House, when I say that certainly at least in theory, the talent pool from which ministerial rank is chosen, is greatly compromised by limiting it to people whose primary qualification is the ability to negotiate constituency organisations and to get their names on the ballot papers to represent the major parties.

The presidential election process, as we have seen amply demonstrated over the past several months, is in urgent need of reform. The policy statements from various members of the Government in advance of constitutional fora, make the argument that the Seanad should be abolished and the Dáil should be reduced in size. In my view, such actions would fix neither any of the major problems and would instead cause additional problems. The Seanad needs to be reformed, not abolished and merely reducing the size of the Dáil will have the effect of making even smaller and shallower the talent pool available from which to choose the people who run the country. I do not see the logic of this argument.

The problem is exemplified in the response to this good Sinn Féin motion and a Fianna Fáil amendment which adds to the strength of the spirit of the motion which is that we cannot fix anything until we fix everything, that this issue cannot be addressed until all the constitutional issues are addressed at once.

I have worked in the health service and I have heard this one trotted out time after time, "We have a committee dealing with this"; "There will be a forum dealing with this"; "There will be a new entity dealing with this"; "There will be a new agency dealing with it". The result is complete administrative paralysis when it comes to fixing things. I hope that in the term of this Seanad and once the health service is reformed - constitutional reform is the second biggest item on my agenda - I hope we can grapple with serious issues of constitutional reform and leave Oireachtas Éireann in better shape than when we found it when we were elected to office in 2011. However, I am not overly confident that the wheels of government will move sufficiently quickly to have this happening in real time. Does this mean we cannot consider reasonable motions and amendments that may fix problems one problem at a time? The answer is "No".

I am in an intermediate position. In my heart I am a little nervous about people who do not have a full stake in our society and committed to living in our society having the same say in the governance of the society as people who live here but I acknowledge the peculiarities both in terms of the cross-Border nature of our society and the divided loyalties which exist. In my heart I believe these two loyalties to be entirely morally neutral. There is not one scrap of moral superiority for the notion of Nationalism over Unionism or for Unionism over Nationalism as they are two separate identities which happen to co-inhabit the same island. Acknowledging the real limitations of the role of the President I think it would provide symbolism for the greater Irish nation for us to extend the franchise. We tend to think of Northern Nationalists in this regard but I would hope that Northern Unionists would take part in the process of voting in the presidential election. I hope that in doing so they would not have to renounce any Britishness they feel nor that they would have to take out Irish passports in order to do so, that they would have the same rights as anyone born in this island. For that reason, with no disrespect to my Sinn Féin colleagues who have tabled a good motion, I believe it has been enhanced by the Fianna Fáil amendment. I urge support for this motion and for the amendment. I thank those who tabled both.